Last fall, onetime Google C.E.O. and current Alphabet board member Eric Schmidt neatly summed up the ethical concerns of those in Silicon Valley about contributing to military initiatives. “There’s a general concern in the tech community of somehow the military-industrial complex using their stuff to kill people incorrectly,” he said, but added that despite being a member of the Defense Innovation Board, where he’s advised the Defense Department on matters relating to tech, there remained a clear line in the sand: “I can’t suggest Alphabet things inside the military,” he said, ”nor would I ever do that.”

It seems that Google, however, has made no such distinction. Though the company claimed back in 2013 to have no ambitions to become a military contractor in its own right, according to Gizmodo, the tech giant has quietly partnered with the Department of Defense to help the federal agency develop artificial intelligence to analyze footage from drones. When news of the pilot project, which is the company’s first with the Defense Department’s Project Maven, was circulated on an internal mailing list, some Google employees were reportedly “outraged” and “concerned” that the company would offer its services for drone-related surveillance technology.

A Google spokesperson confirmed the partnership to Gizmodo, but said that it does not pertain to military combat. Google, the spokesperson said, is providing the Defense Department with TensorFlow A.P.I.s, to help with machine-learning applications. “We have long worked with government agencies to provide technology solutions. This specific project is a pilot with the Department of Defense, to provide open source TensorFlow A.P.I.s that can assist in object recognition on unclassified data,” the spokesperson said. “The technology flags images for human review, and is for non-offensive uses only. Military use of machine learning naturally raises valid concerns. We’re actively discussing this important topic internally and with others as we continue to develop policies and safeguards around the development and use of our machine-learning technologies.”

The partnership is not without precedent; In 2017, the Defense Department spent $7.4 billion on A.I.-related initiatives; Project Maven, also known as the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team, was founded last year to “accelerate DoD’s integration of big data and machine learning.” Months after Project Maven was announced, its leader, Col. Drew Cukor, said the Pentagon would be looking for “commercial partners” to work on its tech. For Google, the collaboration could come with an added boon: a chance to position its cloud business as a viable competitor to Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure as it eyes the federal government as a client. For employees nostalgic for the days of “Don’t Be Evil”, however, the partnership could prove a bitter pill.